A BALLAD OF BEDLAM
OUT from the windswept hollows of the Tomb
Into the Night, ---
Impenetrable gloom
Folding me in from sound and sense and sight;
No Light,
Save from that leprous orb men call the Moon,
Whose rune
Spells Death and Madness:
Like to a blinded babe from out the womb,
Like a dishevelled ghost before the tomb,
I wandered, seeking for my Self the DOOM
OF ANCIENT DAYS was on me.
Not a star
Swam in the heavens, --- but aloft, afar,
One Meteor
Rolled like a great gold goblet through the sky,
Spilling strange dreams.
Strange dreams that ever flow, yet flow amiss
The while a slow voice whispers: "This, perchance then THIS!"
Yet never comes the "right" one.
Time is ended.
Time and Eternity with Fate have blended {207}
Mine awful Destiny: ---
"To watch for ever.
For ever watch, nor see the blind endeavour
Of battling with the soul that wills Eclipse.
"Ever to know.
And yet to know not ever
The thing that irks thee most, how to dissever
Thy Self from the blind wraith that watches thee.
"The deed undone, that is before thee ever!
There is NO TIME, thou canst forget it never,
The Thing Undone is as the Thing Before.
An endless chain, they stretch before thee, ever
Mocking thy soul with purblind hopes that shiver
As salt sea-spray on ice-bound rocks beneath.
"LAUGH! For I bid thee laugh.
I bid thee mangle
These unborn babes of thine,
These hopes that dangle
Like fond frail lilies o'er a lost lagoon:
Witch-tress of innocence it sure would tangle
In subtler mesh than those strange weeds that strangle
Lost swimmers in the foul Sargasso Sea!"
I shut me up. I builded me a Tower
To hide me from the laughter of the world.
I said: "They shall not lure me from my bower
To where their love, a lecherous snake, is curled: {208}
A Basilisk-snake that plays upon the sward
Writhing in slow obedience to its lord.
"What if the Day be long, the night be cheerless?
Is not an universe within my brain?
Is not the high will strong, the strong will fearless?
All I have built, shall I not build again?
Some other Universe where All is One.
Where ONE is ALL I am, and I AM --- NONE!
"Words! 'Tis ever words, and I am stranded
With words, and tangled skeins of Things to Be.
Each word denies a word, and all are branded
Within my brain, and I must strive to see
The subtly sneering forms, the leering faces
Of words each word calls up. For me, NO GRACE is."
ETHEL ARCHER.
{209}